The present invention relates generally to a power generating system, in particular a system which harvests mechanical energy and converts it to electricity.
The current state of piezo technology suffers from lack of vision. The underdeveloped state of the art breeds small-scale, limited applications, which in turn do little to encourage further development of the piezo technology itself—a technology with the potential to revolutionize green energy with the world's first large-scale, cost-effective green energy solution.
Typical power-generating applications of piezo technology include piezo-powered tire pressure sensors, piezo-powered wrist watches, and other small-scale inventions. Almost without exception, all of these applications mount the base of a piezo reed to a surface expected to move or vibrate incidentally, and this incidental motion, yielding inconsistent piezo generation, is just enough to power very small devices. The piezo reed never achieves its maximum efficiency.
Moreover, the maximum efficiency for a single piezo reed today is low, with impedance measured in kilo-Ohms. In theory, this high impedance could be brought down either by improving the piezo materials or by using a larger number of piezo reeds in parallel, but advancements in piezo materials have so far not been well rewarded, given the small-scale market, and multiple reeds for today's applications of incidental motion would only cancel each other, because their motions would be out of phase.
For these reasons, vision for where piezo technology could take us has been low. Even in the best of circumstances (never achieved through incidental motion) a single piezo reed cannot generate enough electricity to power anything but the smallest of devices, and the economic incentives are minimal for improving the materials to lower the impedance of an individual reed. Using multiple reeds only compounds the problem by introducing phase cancelling. Thus, piezo technology is seen to be only good for small-scale applications. No one has yet dreamed that we will one day power our cities with clean piezo electricity.